Number of Employees

Company Profile

Teavana is a specialty retailer offering more than 100 varieties of premium loose-leaf teas, authentic artisanal teawares and other tea-related merchandise through hundreds of company-owned stores and on its website. Founded in 1997, the company offers new tea enthusiasts and tea connoisseurs alike its “Heaven of Tea” retail experience where passionate and knowledgeable “teaologists” engage and educate them about the ritual and enjoyment of tea.

The Challenges

Teavana was using spreadsheets, a business process outsourcer (BPO) for payroll, and paper delivery of direct deposit advices. Collecting and reporting real-time data on its dispersed workforce was difficult. Teavana’s rapid growth caused company leadership to explore better options for greater control of HR/payroll processes as well as more comprehensive functionality, such as self-service and on-the-spot, customizable HR reporting.

The Solutions

UltiPro with cloud delivery made the best sense for Teavana because the retailer needed the company’s IT resources focused on other projects. Since going live on UltiPro, Teavana has migrated to a paperless payroll and is providing electronic information to its employees over the Internet. The HR team is constantly moving more materials and processes to the Web using the UltiPro portal.

Because Teavana’s thousands of employees are spread across the U.S., UltiPro’s Web functionality provides a more productive and effective way to manage employees and deliver quality services to its workforce. Even as more information is easily accessed by the Web portal, Teavana’s IT resources are not burdened because, with cloud technology, Ultimate Software manages all the system details, including upgrades, updates, maintenance, backup, and more.

And with UltiPro’s hundreds of standard and customizable reports, HR Manager Meredith Nappi can now create a range of real-time reports—an activity that was nearly impossible with the company’s previous system. For example, she creates weekly intelligence for the company’s CFO and management team that summarizes actual-vs.-budgeted labor costs and labor hours vs. sales. Because she can slice and dice information with UltiPro, Nappi can break down the figures by week and by store.

“With our previous provider, we had to submit a request and wait days for the report, which was inefficient,” said Nappi. “Now our entire management team is benefiting from UltiPro’s easy-to-use reporting because we can gather data when and how it is needed—whether it is to shed light on a complex business challenge, monitor a particular store, or address a question about one of our thousands of employees.”

Other time savings for the HR staff result from UltiPro’s tools for enterprise integration. UltiPro easily integrates with Teavana’s point of sale (POS) system so that time and attendance information is automatically moved between applications without data entry. Previously, Teavana had to manually input and reconcile data in both systems.

“With UltiPro, we’ve deployed a real-time, user-friendly solution with Web self-service for 4,000 employees, eliminated the need for in-house IT support, and decreased costs,” said Nappi. “We’re experiencing a range of efficiencies across our company with Ultimate Software’s cloud technology.”